So why mastery for enhance?

Post by Geobuster

So... Why mastery?

I understand the numbers and parses, but I'm looking for a more logical explanation.

I know you go spell hit > expertise > mastery > crit > haste

But for the life of me, all I can see, is crit being mega superior. I'm only theorycrafting ofc, still just a low lvl shaman, but I would think, looking at talents, you would want crit. I mean, it would give you infinite flurry uptime, with the increased chance from spells with stormstrike buff, and then same with devestation.

Without stacking it, is it already up pretty much all the time anyways, to where it doesn't matter?

With the crit suppression and the crit to haste for melee classes since cata, I really don't understand why mastery goes over.

I guess one of the reasons, is maybe I don't understand what mastery covers. Is it everything? Fire, frost, and nature.

If it does do all those things, then yeah, I guess I can see why, I just couldnt find a list of everything it covers.

Also, for unleash elements, if you have wf/ft, does it send both out? Or just main hand?

Post by Jonku

Mastery covers all of enhance damage except the physical damage.I have experienced not having any trouble keeping flurry and devastation. The crit you get from gear is good enough for the most part in maintaining it. Mastery is just better. Increases damage to basically all attacks you have. As for unleash elements it unleashes both.

Post by opalexian

Yes, mastery affects all three elements, and since roughly 1/2+ of our damage is pure elemental magic if you're running your 'rotation' (if you can call it that) right, mastery is our best main stat after you hit the hit and exp caps. Everything you listed (with the possible exception of N'K and the weapon buffs) is affected by mastery. I am not sure of how it affects wf/ft, nor which UE actually unleashes since it seems like ever patch they switch one or both from physical to magic and back.

You just cannot have enough mastery, and haste is now mostly crap until you start getting into current endgame gear, where about 2/3 of the purchasable 397 items have haste on them and so might as well have 'hunter only' on them. Boo. D:

I should run a sim again and see what's up. Been a while (before I got my N'Ks) but I can tell you that magic did a good bit of damage then (I believe I ran it this patch.)

Hope that helps a bit!

Post by Geobuster

Yeah it helped. Thanks a ton.

Also, I've read logs and parses about N'K doing quadrulple damage on frost/fire procs over shadow, thanks to mastery, so im near positive it does get effected. Similar to darkmoon cards.

Thanks a ton guys. I appreciate it.

Post by synthisis

Crit is random while mastery gives a direct, reliable buff to your damage. At later gear levels you will have plenty of crit to get decent procs on flurry (atleast 20-30% is good enough), while mastery will give you a big boost in damage.

And yea, reason mastery is SO good is because it buffs almost ALL your damage, literally everything except for these: white melee attacks, stormstrike, WF, unleash WF.